We host in the US as well and even regularly use .com domain names because the service and DNS here (Netherlands Antilles .an) is unreliable. And I'm being positive here...

This means that we really need to focus on local marketing to get our sites ranked in local search. We do this by acquiring links in local sites and mentioning the applicable island a lot in the pages (as Chuck says). If possible we also try to use a local name in the url (i.e. blablacuracao.com). It does seem to work and is a lot easier than overcoming the local challenges. So, I guess it should concern you only a little and not a lot.

I also heard recently that it's good for SEO to use the <address> tag but I always thought that one was deprecated. Anybody have any ideas on that?

Actually what you are describing as your original thinking is how it is typically done. See the comments above for how to actually do it.

Rand was talking about moving content from old-domain.com to new-domain.com which needs to be done with care (Dr. Pete wrote an excellent post about doing this in YouMoz). What you are talking about is 'moving' content from current-site.com to www.current-site.com which is sub-domain and not another domain. No problem there and actually highly recommended to do.

I'm sitting at home trying to get rid of an obnoxious flu and thought I'd watch WF to get the old head working again. How was I supposed to know that you'd make me laugh (and make my head hurt)? You guys never do that! I'm gonna call my lawyer and see if I can sue. ^.^@%&!*&!((*.

Seriously, good content and a shame about the video not working (saw it fine btw).

It always surprises me how often people go for totally crappy architecture. From day one as a designer/developer you are told that people are not supposed to click too much (because they won't). What? They forget on day two?

Sarah, great post. I will need to reread it a few times to get my head around it but it is a great addition to the blog. Looking forward to more posts about legal issues.

A suggestion: as law pertaining to the internet is still in its infancy (compared to e.g. labor law or property law) it can be quite difficult to find a lawyer specialising in this subject. Maybe it would be an idea to create a list of lawyers that specialise in this, similar to the recommended companies list?

We have some clients in the legal sector and from these I know of only one individual locally who knows more than the basics about international copyright but even she knows only little about how this applies to the internet.

Over the last few weeks there's been a lot of talk about PR and the perceived correlation between paid links and drops in PR. Between the comments there are always a few people that say something like "yeah, our PR dropped two points, but the SERPs are still ok". We are seeing the same thing in sites that we have a specific interest in.

This seems positive proof that the relationship between PR and rankings is not very big. But, thinking about the bigger picture, you could also wonder about the reasoning behind the 'penalty round'. Some websites experience a major drop in PR, but they still rank roughly the same for the words/phrases they're targeting!? Why?

IMHO, this is a money issue. Google does not want to hurt the traffic towards these websites per se (hence the SERPs that remain similar), but wants to hurt the companies selling links. All this fud about penalties connected to paid links before the changes in PR, the upheaval during the update and the subsequent realisation that Google actually does something must be costing a lot of people money.

Especially the websites that sell links which experienced a drop of multiple points must be feeling this where it hurts because many paid links schemes are directly connected to PR. Suddenly their links are worth a lot less, but he, the SERPs are still fine....

Thanks for the info! It's good to see that the practical side actually follows the theoretical...

We've done a 301 domain change with a few smaller sites, but mostly with clients that were not very discerning (as in: do what you think is best and don't bother me with it and get me some new business cards while you're at it).

We never did it with a website of above 100 pages though. I can imagine the stress it must have put you through. Do you have any nails left? Mine would have been gone after the first day and I'd be gnawing on bare flesh before the first page was shown as redirected in Google. Kudos.

Actually, he's doing exactly what Rand says.He's being critical of what is said and what is being used to argue the point.Even though Rand and the rest of the team are great sources of information, they too can be wrong or use data out of context.

There are (small) booms with every kind of new business type (which the internet still is). The rollercoaster starts somewhere, the opportunities grow, money is invested, business grows until it acquires critical mass. At this point everybody with half an idea gets on and wants a piece of the pie which means that the business starts growing exponentially but there is no sound basis for it so it needs to crash.

This is what happened 5-6 years ago, but was it really a bad thing? The crash put people back to earth, the internally strong companies survived at the expense of the weak companies and it gave the industry the opportunity to reflect on itself. Of course, a lot of people lost their job and a lot of money was lost, but the smart investors recovered and the strong employees found new jobs with new challenges. In a way, the industry cleansed itself.

I think things are different now because a) the pace is a lot slower now, b) companies are looking at ROI more than they did 8 years ago and c) the basis is a lot stronger because there is more knowledge among the community (professionals and users) as a whole.

Omitted results and supplemental results are not the same thing. See the discussion started by Michael Martinez at this older post on SEOmoz: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-supplementary-my-dear-watson

True, it depends on the client and his perspective. As well as our perspective while educating the client.

You can usually gauge pretty fast what kind of client you have; the kind that's happy to eat at fast food restaurants every week (day?) or the client that prefers fine cuisine and is willing to pay for it. The 'pitch' or lesson you deliver to that client needs to depend on your services and the client.

I used to work in the restaurant business back in Holland and one of the best ways of getting quality return guests was by introducing them to some sort of delicacy. This could be some great amuse or a rare cocktail. It not only showed that the restaurant or bar has quality products/service, but it also spoiled them for 'inferior' businesses.

Maybe i'm over-associating, but I think this is the way to go for individual clients. Show them the benefits of good old-fashioned SEO (and the dangers of those scams) and if they have a craving for the good stuff they will come back. It will cost time (that's where the gauging comes in), but it can deliver great ROI and you're also educating someone in the process.

For the mass-marketing side of things there's a lot of great suggestions here. Although.... a movie about SEOs? "Michael Gray in ... drum roll ... Revenge of the SEOs" or "Matt Cutts in Silence of the SERPs" :)

I think people are generally smarter than that. They know on some level that when it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. So, when they get burned by these $59.95 snake oil guys/gals (which they will), they will figure that they should have listened to the upstanding SEO that warned them about it.

I usually try to look at this kind of stuff filosophically and not be bothered too much by these practices (maybe this also has to do with the whole Caribbean island thing, but nonetheless).

Most of our local 'competitors' build websites (our core business is design) that make even my mother cry with shame, but still they have business. Some of those 'competitors' are doing pretty good. We even get questions sometimes about why we don't make websites like them...

Our theory is that clients get the design company that they want at that point. The client's needs are governed by their level of education. They get their crappy design and are happy with it until they learn where it fails horribly. At that point they come to us for a proper website. Like Identity says above "they are going to fall and crash" and hopefully they learn from this.

The same goes with these cringeworthy 'SEOs' Rand describes. People try to take the easy route and after a while they crash and burn. Real SEOs will then need to be there to pick up the pieces and show them what it can really do for the client's company. That is, if the client hasn't decided that all SEOs are evil leeches. If that happens then that clients has the wrong frameset anyway and you probably don't want him/her as your client.

Graywolf linked to a Youtube video the other day about subliminal advertising. The video showed how Derren Brown (British magician/NLP expert/con artist?) influenced the creative process of two guys in advertising by subtly showing them images and phrases on their cab ride over. Apparently it worked like crazy....

It's one of the basic principles of advertising that when people recognize a product (it doesn't matter from where) they will feel more comfortable with the brand compared to a product they have never seen. I guess you're right that SEOs tend to focus on the search engines and forget the other opportunities.

A signal in Webmaster Central saying "we think you're doing something manipulative" would also be a great addition, and would certainly help many sites who don't know better to pay attention.

Wouldn't this also signal spammers that they've been found out so they know it works as long as they get no message? If you leave people in the dark they will have more trouble manipulating the SERPs. Regretfully the 'bad guys' (yeah, they're intentional) screwed the mom-and-pop sites.

One of the considerations we take into account is the type of business the client is in. With any sustained activity contract (as opposed to a one-time activity like a campaign, package or training) we don't want to work for our client's competitor because of the ethical concerns there. If our client's line of business is not particularly competitive (e.g. government organization) we charge a lower price than we would for clients in a more competitive marketplace (e.g. hospitality business).

The reason for this is not that we want to cash in on the greater need of those hospitality clients (although it helps in the sales process). The main reason is that when we take a client we're basically shutting ourselves down for all those other clients in that same line of business. As a result we don't only charge for hours, rankings, traffic, etc., but we also charge for exclusivity and missing out on future opportunities.

Usually we tell our clients to do get a listing the ODP and the Yahoo! directory. One of the most important reason for this being that many new websites use the results of the ODP in their sites (=instant link spawning).

A company that is utterly clueless about SEO (but is in web design in our market) was ranked #1 for our most important keyword for a long time simply becuase they have a lot of links resulting from their listing in the ODP. They were kicked down in Google because they did a redesign and put all their text in images (talk about clueless...), but they still rank #1 in Yahoo for the same key phrase because of their listing in the Yahoo directory.

We've been listed in DMOZ for a few months now and it has resulted in some links already and we expect this number to grow without having to do anything for it.

I think one of the most important actions for enterprise sites in this respect is to not only give their editors some more freedom, but also the public. I know, it's a classic web 2.0 paradigm, but I do think it works. You create content, facilitate the discussion and let people create content by commenting. This not only increases content (relevance), but also loyalty and incoming links when done right. (Just look at the discussions going on here, I've linked to SEOmoz countless times already and many others here as well probably)

Some of the large enterprise sites still seem pretty ignorant when it comes to web 2.0 concepts. Many of them are trying to leverage visitor-generated content, but it's usually done clumsily. In order to build an effective web 2.0 site I think a lot of managers/ departmental heads need to get off their high horse and listen to people that know about the interweb (like what Shahid says). It's difficult I know, but the Behemoths of the off-line world need to slim down and smart up to live on in the online world.

Now (or more accurately yesterday, I'm a bit slow) that we're talking about Social Media, MySpace and all that jazz I have a question which you guys probably know the answer to.

A friend of mine has a website with hundreds of incoming links from MySpace pages. Almost all his incoming links are from MySpace and almost none from other sources. The site has been around for a while as well as the links.

He asked me the other day why his website has a PR of only 3 while ours (with a lot less links) has PR 4. I told him that the site has such a low PR because those MySpace pages have no to hardly any PR so they have no juice to pass along. I wasn't really satisfied with this answer myself though because he really has a LOT of links from MySpace.

Now that I'm reading this article and the comments I'm thinking that maybe Google is already penalizing for having too many links from one social media source like MySpace. Do you guys think this makes any sense or am I reading too much in nothing serious?

I think it's a bit conspicuous that you're telling this to the world....

Maybe it really is true and when somebody finds proof that Rand kicks puppies he can say that he already told everybody about it through you. Is he even really in China? Or is that like the 'conference call' and is he really just in his office all day with Optimus and Megatron?

Xi'an is really cool! You should go have breakfast at one of the restaurants near the backpacker hotels. A lot of interesting people there and there's always a kiwi or an aussie who will need people to go with him in one of the buses to see all the sites. And rent a bike and drive around the wall. Aaahh, I'm so jealous. I was there 10 years ago and I'd love to go back one day.

Have you tried your search on google.cn as well? When you try it from the 'free world' the results are different from .com, but the #1 is still there on #5. Maybe you get different results there?

NB: I'm also getting a dropdown out of the search box when I type in something at google.cn. Has that always been there?

Lately there have been a lot of these types of ads (like the "The Algorithm Killed Jeeves" campaign as AussieWebmaster pointed out and the Aqua Teen Hunger Force (a.k.a. ied) ads and there are probably more that I'm not aware of as I live on a Caribbean island). This one looks very similar to me.

As for the $$ for the front page of Yahoo: I don't know what the ROI is for a typical ad there. But if you have an ad there, wouldn't you prefer to have one that also generates buzz?

The intent of the car company was most likely to create some buzz (which worked as testified to by this post).

What gets me though is that a company like Yahoo!, which always talks about usability and "the user experience" being the most important for them, has allowed this ad. Do you think they charged extra for this? I hope they did, because this will get them some baaadd press.

Like Kimber and Jtaylor's companies we do all designing and implementing ourselves. This means that you have the luxury of not having to wait for the client to take action.

I think that the problem is not necessarily keyword reports. You can just fill in any type of deliverable in its place. "The client does nothing with my []" where [] can be anything you want; design proposals, quote, update report, etc. And now imagine you're in the Caribbean where they say "I will look at it first thing in the morning, swa" for a few weeks/months....

For this reason we try to do as much as possible for our clients and take as many decisions out of their hands as possible. So, we don't just generate the keyword list; we write the text for it, put some nifty colors around it, upload it to our own servers and put it live. With a bit of luck the client just has to write the check and be happy.(I can imagine that this doesn't work for you guys though, but hey you asked for past experiences)